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New submitter perdelucena writes "Former world chess champion Garry Kasparov was arrested outside a Moscow court, where the verdict in the trial of the Pussy Riot group members was being announced on Friday, Russian police said."Update: 08/18 01:14 GMT by T: Kasparov has written an account of the arrest.

Arresting a national hero like that probably wasn't the wisest thing to do. We are talking a Russian Chess Champion, something which is what we measure high end super computers against.

Frankly, I don't think we should be concerned about Russian internal politics. We the People, of America don't seem to have our own government in control. Somebody's driving it, but damn it, it's not us apparently.

It's not checkmate for anyone but Pussy Riot. Western decadence will not be tolerated I am sure.

We have nobody to thank but ourselves. We win the Cold War, and then let them rot because we were gloating dicks. We have more in common with them than we can imagine, and damn far more to gain by working together than fighting. Why is that oligarchies, that really controls us, have such short sighted, fear-biting, knuckledraggers leading them?

I was wondering how long it would take for someone to pull out the old "The US is just as bad" nonsense in response to the Pussy Riot trial. I never could have imagined that person would be so self-centered as to suggest that Russia's problems are our fault, as if the people over there are a bunch of children who couldn't possibly deal with their own problems and need a "grown-up" to come fix things. Yeah, I'm sure the world would be so much better off if the US had sent occupying forces over in the wake of the collapse of the USSR.

The Cold War ends, do you think the nukes magically vanished into thin air? What do you think happens to nukes when the commander of the base is out farming potatoes to not starve to death? In Capitalist Russian, everything is for sale? Have you ever heard any numbers on how many rogue nukes are floating around from that era? Who the fuck needed to build one when they had a garage sale on them?

You see, establishing healthy relationships with your neighbors in the world is

Excellent post, but you arrived at a wrong conclusion. Who do you think will safeguard nukes better, a Supreme Dictator with a rule by Iron Fist, or a Wild West style hungry democracy?

Everybody knows that dictators are easier to deal with: transfer a few million to his Swiss bank account and you can harvest all his national resources and dump toxic waste back. You can do the same with democracy but the price tag will be much higher:) This is why we installed our personal pet pocket dictators in Iran and a

- Mass media is a government's pet. They either lie (Fox News) or hide facts. There are a few exceptions, like NYT, but they are not read by an average Joe. This is the beginning of a disease.

- We got a common enemy to keep populace in fear. "Look, the Terrorists, they are everywhere! Watch out for the terrorists!"-- This is an old Russian Stalin-era trick to grip power with iron fist =~ s/terrorists/imperialists/

The truth is, from EU perspective, that unfair trials and abusing law system (Gitmo, Manning) is comparable in US to Russia (Chodorkovskij, Kasparov, Pussy Riot). Unfortunate truth is: from GWB days, USA lost ability to protest against human rights violations anywhare, which is sad.

Our help? How often is "our help" nothing more than glorified carpetbaggers wrapped in flags of diplomacy? We don't have friends, we have interests. We don't call it imperialism when its a corporation. How fucking handy, huh?

Have you been following what it's like in Russia? I mean even if you don't give one human fuck about them, then at least be concerned about how their well being can be used against you? If the ways of the West prove to be a poison to these people, they will hate us. I don't know about y

Living in Europe you sure get a prime time view on the developments of crime in Russia. 'til the fall of the iron curtain, I sat right next to it with a perfect view of dictatorships and what it's like to live there. Now I get a perfect view on the Russians buying multi-million real estate around me.

"The situation in USSR, and then Russia, in late 80s to early 90s, was such that a lot of people clamored for everything even remotely Western, and especially American, solely on the grounds that it has to be awesome if it comes from people who live so great. You guys could have easily go in and do some actual good there, there was so much goodwill to fall back on it was insane."

I don't dispute this. Maybe you misunderstood me. That's what The People wanted, but the powers that be would never let them have it. Any attempt by the US to help or educate or aid the Russian people was rebuffed -- with prejudice -- by the government.

I have said this for many years: it is clear that what The People want is not what they're getting. And yes, to say that attempts to help from outside were "discouraged" is an understatement.

"Instead you did the usual shit, which is to say, promote extreme rapid economic liberalization - "shock therapy" is what they called it - which resulted in this. And, eventually, people elected Putin, because "democracy" became a swear word associated with utter economic collapse and extreme poverty."

Don't blame outsiders for what was engineered from the inside. I repeat: assistance was offered. Not only by the U.S. government but by many private organizations around the world. It was refused by the people in power. This is the ever-present problem with any kind of economic or political revolution: you have to be extremely careful who or what takes the place of the old power structure. Often, the result is disaster.

But you can't blame that on outsiders. Nobody "conquered" Russia, to be able to impose their will from the outside. That isn't what happened here. And pretending that it did is not productive.

It's just not that simple. There is no foolproof way of rebooting a nation.
It's never been done. Nobody knows how.

Russia suffered the same fate many
companies suffer when they bring in outside consultants to reorganize them.
You get a lot of layoffs, department mergers and splits, and when the consultants go home, nobody knows how the new system is supposed to work, and those who knew how the old system worked are gone or lost themselves.

They wanted communism by having the government own all the corporations. We got communism with all the corporations owning the government. Republicans are communists! Wait, what was the question again?

That would be a plutocracy, not communism. But yes, I know what you mean. Corporations have bought off both Democrats and Republicans to a larger extent. But who's really to blame is is people like...YOU...and ME. Let's be honest here. By and large the average US citizen just want's to work, play , and raise a family. They don't want to spend time constantly looking after their own government. But if history has taught us anything, is that for

> Something I never understood was why the fuck the US cared about the polytical system in a far region.
Well, the ideology was that global socialism was inevitable, but the USSR and China wanted to speed the process up (eg. encouraging and supply weaponry to the Chinese in their Civil War, the North Korean invasion, the North Vietnamese invasion, the communist Afghanistan government, invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia, arming insurgents and dodgy governments across the globe [Yemen, Malaysia, Angola, Ethiopia etc etc]).

Then there was the massive Warsaw Pact tank armies poised to drive through Western Europe at a moment's notice. Some of this was "the best defense is a good offense" mindset in the aftermath of The Great Patriotic War (as the USSR called World War 2), but plenty of it was itching to get their hands on more territory too. Fortunately the US, despite its other flaws, had the 'minerals' (translation: testicles; for those in the US), the capability, and (most importantly) the will to contain communist expansion around the globe (since many other countries would wring their hands but then appease the Soviets).

Even the Russians now acknowledge that the Soviet system was a mistake (although as time passes nostalgia is starting to take of the edge off the horrors for newer generations of Russians).

It is an interesting period of history. You can't really understand the post-Cold War of today unless you understand the Cold War. Similarly, you won't understand the Cold War unless you understand the historical aspects of World War 2. It's not exactly "turtles all the way down" but if you want to understand why the US acts as it does (which, on a strategic scale, is usually quite rational) then I suggest you make an effort and trawl through the colossal masses of information available at all levels that describe the relevant history. Then you won't be forced to make statements on Slashdot from not knowing why the actors (US, Russia, Europeans, Israel, Iran etc) act as they do. Good luck.

Fortunately the US, despite its other flaws, had the 'minerals' (translation: testicles; for those in the US), the capability, and (most importantly) the will to contain communist expansion around the globe"

The threat of communism was largely used as an excuse to target any left-wing/socialist government or even those that just wouldn't play ball. If a country started doing things the US didn't like e.g. nationalizing an oil company, angering a US company etc, suddenly they would be considered as a communist threat. In the case of Guatamala it was the Union Fruit Company. They owned 42% of arable land due to purchases and/or land being ceded by military dictatorships. When the government of Guatemala tried to free up that land, Union Fruit went crying to the US government. Before long there was a US-backed coup. The official excuse was that Guatemala was going to become a "Soviet beachhead".

We have a similar story when it comes to the Iranian Coup in 1953. The government there wanted a better deal when it came to oil revenue from the AIOC (Anglo Iranian Oil Company, later it became BP), so they nationalized their oil industry. Although AOIC wasn't a US company, the nationalization was seen as a threat to US oil assets. An example that other countries in the region might follow. The US and Britain arranged a coup know as operation Ajax which replaced the democratic government with an unpopular dictator (the Shah) and a brutal CIA-trained secret police (SAVAK) to keep him in power. Again the threat of communism was used as a smokescreen.

Here are just a few US-backed dictators from central and south America alone.

Nicaragua - Somomza Dynasty

Guatemala - Carlos Enrique Castillo Armas (and others)

El Salvador - Maximilliano Hernandez Martinez (and others)

Chilie - Augusto Pinochet

Argentina - Jorge Rafael Videla

Paraguay - Alfredo Stroessner

Bolivia - GEN. Hugo Banzer Suarez

Cuba - Fulgencio Batista

We know the anti-communism crusade was an excuse, not just because of specific evidence in each case (Union Fruit etc), but because US policy towards left/socialist governments has remained largely the same despite the end of the cold war and break up of the Soviet Union. There has been continued interference in the governments of Central and South American states. e.g. Bolivia, through selective funding of parties opposed to Moralez and the coup attempt against Chavez (there is significant evidence of US involvement). Communism was used as a smokescreen during the cold war just as terrorism is used as a smokescreen today.

What makes Russia, or rather, the Soviet Union, such an enemy? Nukes? The USSR didn't have any nukes when the cold war started. And the US didn't cut all ties with England and France when they got their nukes. And the relationship with China even warmed up when they separated their "brand" of communism from Moscow, long after they got nukes at their hands.

I think it's ideology.

The powers that are seem to be terribly afraid that people might consider any social or economic system more favorable to their needs than the one we have currently running. As soon as anyone comes up with a society model that differs from ours, we vilify them. Why? What happened to our spirit of competition, have them compete and let's see which one works out? Instead we fight economy battles of proportions few people even know anything about, something that is actually anathema to our own economy model that allegedly enshrines free trade as sacrosanct.

What are we afraid of? Isn't our system the best there was, is and will be?

Ideology was the rationalization, IMHO. You're right that it wasn't nukes. I think the Cold War is best understood as a sort of continuation of WW2.

The US and the USSR were pretty much the only major powers which weren't gutted by WW2. The USSR nearly was, and probably bore the true brunt of the defeat of the European Axis powers. It was just big enough to absorb its losses, whereas Britain and France were not. The Soviet entry into the Pacific theater against Japan was probably at least as significant in the Japanese acceptance of unconditional surrender as was the use of atomic weapons by the US, which is not really understood by the public at large.

Churchill was very conscious of Stalin's ambitions, and sought to position the West favorably for the postwar period for probably a year before the end of the war. But the British star was already waning and it was America which was already sitting at the head of the table. Truman and Eisenhower were looking more toward ending the war in Europe with fewer American casualties (looking to finally focus on the Japanese), and were willing to let the Soviets bleed Hitler from the East, and let the Russians pay the price in lives for doing so. Which made the loss of Eastern Europe into the Soviet sphere of influence inevitable.

I give Stalin a lot of credit for quickly building the Soviet economy after the end of the war, despite grievous losses. While Americans were demobilizing and reaping the peace dividend and building the consumption economy, the Soviets were making sure their near-defeat never happened again. It took a while before the American public noticed there was a new global competitor, so it became necessary for American leaders to propagandize the matter, and make the public afraid. Which is where the anti-communist ideology and space race and nuclear arms race came in so handy. People who are afraid are more easily led.

The Baby Boom generation has been rather non-introspective about these matters, as has America as a whole. We haven't really figured out what it all means and drawn mature conclusions because we just haven't bothered to examine it very closely. Godwin's Law is a great illustration of this.

Vietnam was no "proxy" war, it was an opportunist trying to get a cheap and popular US victory in a French colonial war which escalated when the Russians and Chinese got involved as well. Korea had Chinese involvement so had very little to do with Russia.

Oh, and saying that corporations own the US government is like saying favored shop keepers own their local mafia. It is completely backwards and utterly ridiculous. This economic fascism(corporatism to use a newer definition describing the nominal private ownership of the means of production directed by the state) is a function of our government, the ones with all the guns, not those that pay off our government to point them somewhere else. Just imagine the power disparity between one institution and the other. Saying these insignificant corporations own the government is an obvious distortion of the truth to shift blame away from the violent actor(the state) to the one benefiting from the violence(the corporation). They are certainly not blameless, not because they own this vast state, but rather because they actively participate with it. That is a far more accurate description of events.

Thanks for that.

Good to see at least one other person commenting that grasps the reality. Government has the exclusive power to use violence and imprisonment, and writes the laws and determines who is breaking them. The government has the power to do a "Darth Vader" - "I have altered the deal. Pray I do not alter it further." and has done so in the past.

As has been famously said, it is the nature of government to grow. A government "grows" by increasing the amount of wealth, capital, and property it controls, and it's power and control over the population.

Corporations/businesses/industries sitting on all this wealth, property, and capital that the government wants ultimately to control (along with individual wealth/property/capital) are effectively forced to make "deals with the devil" because their competitors are attempting to do so, in order to gain regulatory/legislative advantage to force them out of business.

This in no way excuses the behavior, but one can clearly understand the reasons for it without condoning it. It's sort of like trying to be "the last one killed" by helping the murderer(s) tie the other soon-to-be victim(s).

It's predictable and one of the biggest reasons to keep the central government relatively small, domestically weak, and spending only a fraction of the total GDP is does currently. And a pox on both major US political parties. Both are equally guilty of expanding government, particularly after the '50s.

The real problem is that from an outside perspective, it's almost insane to support Putin.

On the contrary, it's very sane, just short-thinking.

The way it goes is this. Under Putin today, a guy has an apartment, a family, a job with a decent pay - enough for good food and maybe even a car - basically, some sense of stability and security. He also remembers how, fifteen years ago, it was practically wild west on the streets, and jobs were few and hard to come buy and paid little. Now the government tells him that "those guys" basically want to rewind the clock back. And, indeed, when he looks, he spots some of the same figures in the opposition camp that led the country in the 90s. It doesn't matter that most there aren't, his attention is focused on those few. Then he's told that the rest are no better, and that they also want to "destabilize" everything. And he goes votes for Putin because, even for all the flaws that he can see around, he lives well enough that he has too much to lose - and he's afraid to lose more than he desires to win.

From the Russian's standpoint, they've given communism and capitalism a go, and neither has made them better off. From a purely academic standpoint, both implementations were so hopelessly banjaxxed that neither 'really counts' as an implementation of either ideology. Now, the younger generation, having heard stories from the older generation about how things were 'better' under the older regime, are falling back into a dictatorship (meet the old boss, same as the new boss). 'Tis Politics 101 -> actual change requires a vast amount of resources, while the appearance of change can be had for a whistle and some bubble-gum, and is often times seen as 'just as effective.'

I imagine what they really want is for the people who've been holding power to 'disappear.' The absolute saddest part of it all is that by the time that happens, an entire new generation will have been corrupted; and thus, this is how this virus continues throughout space and time. Killing it requires a simultaneous attack from everywhere, all at once.

Pretty much this, with a twist. Following the collapse of communism, there was a very brief period that could best be described as some sort of organized anarchy. Anything goes. Most people I know in Russia kinda liked this time, I mean, think about it: You're living under a repressive regime that wants to control your thoughts, and suddenly it's gone and you can breathe freely and do whatever you want.

People sure went nuts about this. The various "we love Russia" movies littering YouTube give you a bit of

At least you realize that their short-term problems were not an inherent problem with "capitalism", as many people there -- and even here, in this/. topic, have tried to assert.

Their short experiment was corrupted early on, by many of the same power-mongers who corrupted their attempts at "communism" early on. And let's be honest. The Soviet Bloc was never anything close to being actually Communist. They weren't even good Socialists. THEY might have pretended it was communist, but it has never met any r

> Russian culture is different. They want a great strong leader.
No country wants a weak leader. The Russians are no different to anyone else in this regard (this should be no surprise, they are generally intelligent human beings too). The Russians don't want a dictator either. The Russian "Strong Leader" myth is nothing more than propaganda put out by the ruthless and opportunistic dictators the Russians have been cursed with. Please don't justify the subversion of democracy in Russia by using such stat

Which is a grossly distorted viewpoint. There is no way their highly corrupted form of "democracy" or "capitalism", for that matter, was going to be their instant savior. Apparently many people felt that way, but it isn't even remotely realistic.

Well, we had real democracy for a very brief time. I'd say that 1993 and 1996 parliamentary elections in Russia were really free. Of course it was still in the same naive/idealistic atmosphere, which is why a lot of freaks and cooks were elected; but people at least really wanted them there. Presidential election of 1996 was falsified to not let the commies win. From there it went downhill.

We did have real capitalism for a while, too - a while longer, in fact. I know because my mom actually created her business back then. Her main headache was actually organized crime / racket, not the government, but that's what you get in a "wild west" capitalism. Other than that, people could make fortunes out of air with effort and cunning (and, often, with deceit and treachery - but again that's laissez faire for you), and did just that.

The problem is that many people in the USSR thought that, if private businesses were allowed, then anyone could do it and be successful - themselves included. Turned out that's not how it works. A few people got insanely rich. A fair few people, like my mom, were stubborn and lucky enough to persevere and get a decent fortune out of it. Most people got nothing out of it, and their lives became worse, not better. It's why by '96 already more people were willing to vote for a commie president than for Yeltsin, and why they had to falsify those elections.

And if you think their crime is down now, you just aren't looking high enough.

It's certainly down from where it was in the 90s. Again, I would kinda know because I lived there before and after. It's still very high compared to most Western countries, sure, but it's all relative.

Thing is, back then, the government was very inept, and corruption where it existed was local - so e.g. cops would be conspiring with the criminals. Which is why you had to pay to the criminals if you ran a business. These days,corruption still exists, but it's now streamlined and confined to the government & the ruling party. They don't deal with criminals anymore; they take it from you solely for themselves, and every bureaucrat who does it shares with his higher-up. It's a slightly better arrangement because there's no competition (which, in case of criminal gangs, often means burned shops and shot owners).

Even many Americans get this wrong. Coercion, blackmail, protection rackets and monopolies have NOTHING to do with capitalism. At all. Not even close.

Capitalism is private ownership of the means on production. It's completely orthogonal to the existence or non-existence of coercion, blackmail, protection rackets or monopolies. You can have capitalism with them, or you can have something else without them.

Their mistake was actually that they thought that capitalism was inherently immune to all those things. That if you just liberalize the economy, things magically get better because of the "invisible hand of the market" and such. It doesn't. The government still has to actively work to prevent coercion and blackmail, and regulate naturally arising monopolies. Of course, they made it even worse by themselves partaking in coercion and blackmail, and taking over monopolies while maintaining them.

The problem was that they expected that this could happen OVERNIGHT without much effort. Without a lot of struggle and strife. It just doesn't happen that way. Nobody promised them a magical power that could cause this to happen THIS YEAR.

The people were actually promised just that. The leaders... some of them knew they were lying. Others were naive enough that they actually believed it themselves.

I realize that there are many people, like your mother, who bit the bullet and worked hard and got it done. And I am proud and grateful for such people. But from my understanding (and I know a lot of Russians who have come to the US), most people seemed to thing it was just something that would fall from the sky, and became angry when it didn't and they found that the same gangsters they had to deal with before were still running things, just under a different name.

You misunderstand the source of the anger. It's not just that they didn't get what they thought they'd get. It's that other things were taken away from them before, and it was explained that only by taking those things away they can move on to that next better stage, which would be any day now. And the things taken away were things that people happen to value - things like having bread on your table every day, for yourself and your wife and your kids. Having clean water and electricity. Having open schools stuffed with teachers. The state provided them all in USSR, and as part of the reforms of that state they were taken away, and people grumbled, but they were told that they'd get much more and better from a flourishing private market than that if they only just persevere for a year or two. When the promised riches didn't happen, people treated that as theft - and I cannot really blame them for it.

Fischer was really good, and for a time he was indeed the best, but many better players came after him.

Regarding chess players and governments it is not unusual for really smart people who become celebrities to go into politics. Everybody has his political views and intelligent people are usually very able to defend them. Einstein did a lot of politics, so did Oppenheimer (at great cost to himself) and many others.

Smart people are a threat to those who hold power. Especially the subset of smart people who are politically engaged and willing to put themselves at risk to protest and demand change. And among them, the subset who are world famous and therefore have easy access to the press, well, they are just beyond dangerous.

There is a long history of new dictatorial regimes wiping out, killing, or scaring away all of the educated class, thus making the general populace less likely to organize, garner international attention, or outsmart anyone in the regime. This fits the pattern.

The issue is that Christian faith generally teaches one to be humble and modest. Even more specifically, "it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God". We kinda expect the clergy to live what they preach.

And some do. For example, the late patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Pavle, would ride a bus [blogspot.com] or walk on the street [blogspot.com], without fancy clothing other than what's required from him by his rank. Meanwhile, the current patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, Kirill, rides a black limo [blogbuster.ru] with a special flag and license plate (so that he doesn't get stopped by the cops when he goes twice the speed limit).

Reading that article you cited, I don't see any cozy relations between the nazis and the Catholic Church at all. I see a lof of mistrust and a lot of deception on the part of the Nazis and a falling out even before the the second world war began.

From the Czars, to the Reds, and now to Putin, you're still serfs, all these centuries later.

Oh I know, you look to "strength" in the Kremlin. Well you got your "strength": crush all dissent. Rendering you an antiseptic den of ass kissing and tyranny and oligarchs. You're greatest weakness is your "strength", fools.

Depressing. Pathetic. All hail imperial 17th century Russia, for all time apparently. Still playing at strong man games. The West moves on to Democracy, China gets rid of its warlords. But not you Russia: still stuck in the past with your lame belief in the big strong man, like a bear! Disgusting.

Unless you Russians actually fucking do something about it. Win your country. The Russian Revolution, take 2: democratic this time.

Unless you Russians actually fucking do something about it. Win your country. The Russian Revolution, take 2: democratic this time.

Most of my compatriots seem to be perfectly happy at the present state of affairs, and get mad at anyone suggesting something along these lines, calling us "sellouts to the west" and saying that we must be on the "washington payroll" etc. I figured if they want to see it that way, I might as well make that happen.

Don't be a fucking serf!

I'm not, I bailed out - just got my Canadian permanent residence this year, finally, and not looking back. If they insist of riding that train all the way back to the Middle Ages, with autocracy an

Rough transcription: "What are you doing? I'm being detained? What am I charged with? What am I charged with? What am I charged with? What am I charged with? What am I charged with? What am I charged with?"

Hiram Mightor: We're going to have to take you into custody.Mentok: Ha ha. That's outrageous. What am I charged with?Hiram Mightor: Don't have to tell you anymore. Clearly you haven't been reading your Scalia.

They have recently enacted a law where pretty much any mass gathering of people is considered a demonstration. And another, where you must give a written notice in advance, and they then grant you permission to hold one; if you don't get a permission, then it's an illegal gathering which is a crime. There have already been cases where people were harassed and even arrested under those laws when the "gathering" consisted of only 3 people. According to the news, there was a crowd of about 300 near the court b

Well, soon you will begin to see what started this whole affair in the first place. The President of the Republic of Kalmykia has powerful friends, and Putin is not at the top amongst them. These friends have spaceships and don't piddle around, especially with chess. In other words, Gary fucked with the Aliens by criticizing their Kalmykian friend [chessbase.com], and Putin, the incredibly patient fellow he is, is finally closing in -- in service of the KGB (King's Gambit Bezopasnosti).

... after Putin having completed his "rokirovka". In english this is the chess move "castling". In this case, the rokirovka was the dictatorial and anti-democratic switch Putin used with Medvedev to get around the Russian constitution (which was designed to stop people like Putin from becoming President for longer than was healthy for the State).

The amazing thing is people don't see Putin as the dictator he is - there really is little difference between Putin and the North Korean crew, Putin is just much

3 reasons:1. He's a chessplayer, which necessarily makes him a giant nerd. Hence news for nerds.2. This is stuff that matters, especially if you're Russian.3. The potential for "In Capitalist Russia..." jokes is obvious.

Regarding 2:No. Not especially if you are Russian - more like especially if you're a human living in the world of today, where a Russia that reverts to old habits is a dangerous fucking thing. As someone who was actually alive when the soviet union broke up in '91 and have visited some ex-soviet states in the time since, I've seen both sides of the coin. Trust me, this one is better.

Or was. It's getting bad again, and it's getting bad quickly. Putin sucking up to the church, smashing down on any political dissent... If this is allowed to go unchecked it's a matter of when not if russia will start the rearmament of their military forces, if they haven't already, and once more become a volatile player in world politics with their finger on the launch button.

Now I live in Sweden, so I'm close enough that maybe I should be worried for my own sake, but I'm not. We've got Finland between us and the Russians, and nobody fucks with those guys and get away with it. But on a political scale and a global relations scale, this is worrying news indeed. The fact that other countries just wave it off, well... that's no surprise. But you can bet your ass their military advisers have started drawing up plans for the worst case scenario.

People don't care about Kasparov being arrested half as much as the judicial farce that was just inflicted on Pussy Riot.

The reason you should care is because the members of Pussy Riot that were given 2 year prison sentences are political prisoners (per Amnesty International and almost every other human rights organization). And if you don't care about political prisoners, then you suck at life.

You should care because they will spend that time in the worst-of-the-worst "black" prisons. They will endure daily rape, by both fellow inmates and staff. They will leave (if they leave) with HIV and/or multi-drug resistant TB. They will most likely not leave... Or last a week, for that matter.

The court didn't need to sentence them to any crazy-long sentence, because the court sentenced them to death and hell. Simple as that.

People don't care about Kasparov being arrested half as much as the judicial farce that was just inflicted on Pussy Riot.

The reason you should care is because the members of Pussy Riot that were given 2 year prison sentences are political prisoners (per Amnesty International and almost every other human rights organization). And if you don't care about political prisoners, then you suck at life.

I genuinely wish people were this upset when CIA was kidnapping people around the world, shipped them to Guantanamo, tortured them, then released them because they had no evidence.

But no, let's get all upset about some punks getting jail sentence (which will be overturned soon anyway, they were just made an example of) in Riussia.

Hey Chairman Mao may have intentionally starved 20 million of his own people to death in China BUT:1. He didn't like America.2. He didn't like capitalists.3. The CIA did something bad once so therefore Chairman Mao is the good guy and all Americans and Kasparov (that dirty Jew but fredprado uses the term "CIA" to cover over his bigotry) are EVIL!

Now lets talk about how great Pol Pot was because he made 100% sure that 2 million Cambodians were never forced to see evil Capitalist Marketing from Evil US Corpo

Russia didn't become some nice delightful place governed by law abiding men just because the USSR collapsed.

Which rises some questions about whether said collapse said something about the viability of Communism after all, instead of merely of the nature of the place it was tried on. And that, in turn, leads to some questions about whether our current love affair with free-market Capitalism as the only "realistic" choice despite the corruption it has led to is really such a good idea.

Russia is not the only place where the communism didn't work. Everywhere it was implemented it eventually collapsed. Even in China. Today China is more a capitalist totalitarian regimen than a communist one.

I can't really tell if capitalism is a good choice for Russia, but I am quite sure communism is not a good choice for anyone.

The government controlling everything is totalitarianism, not communism. There is capitalist totalitarianism. There wasn't any communist implementation in the real world without it though.

Now about China, a lot of international companies have plants in China, have employees and pay salaries to these employees. China does not control all means of production and it is not a communist country anymore for a long shot.

It is amazing that I have to speel to you that "US" means "United States". RBN is not a government entity, it does about as much harm as the Yakuza, the Mafia, and the Chinese triads, and a lot less harm than most US corporations.

Russians are not the bad guys anymore. Not because they are morally superior or anything of the sorts, but because they lack the power and influence to be the bad guys.

China, although in a better economical position, lacks the opportunity to be the bad guys because of decades of neglect in international relation and consequent lack of real political influence in anything but itself.

As of now only US has both the economical power and political influence to be a negative force in a global scale. I am qu

Can we simply agree on the bad guys sitting in the governments, no matter what country, with the people suffering under them?

Let's be blunt here, "the Russian" never really was an enemy of the people of the US. Quite the opposite, the US (or rather "the West" in general) were held in high esteem in the former East Bloc countries. The official stance is something really different.

I also don't hate "the US" for the actions of their leaders. I hate what the US leaders do to the world, but I know enough people

The US is getting worse, for sure. However, the US is nowhere in the league of current day China or Russia in terms of repression, lack of transparency, killings of journalists, bias against of minorities, bullying neighbours, etc etc. It is not even close.